Even New Phones Are No Longer Guaranteed To Have the Latest Version of Android (theverge.com) 158
Vlad Savov, writing for The Verge: The OnePlus 5T and Razer Phone
are two fundamentally different devices, which are nonetheless united by one unfortunate downside: both of them are going on sale this month without the latest version of Android on board. OnePlus will tell you that this issue is down to its extremely stringent testing process, while Razer offers a similar boilerplate about working as fast as possible to deliver Android Oreo. But we're now three months removed from Google's grand Oreo launch, timed to coincide with this summer's total eclipse, and all of these excuses are starting to ring hollow. Why do Android companies think they can ship new devices without the latest and best version of the operating system on board? The notorious fragmentation problem with Android has always been that not every device gets the latest update at the same time, and many devices get stuck on older software without ever seeing an update at all. What's changed now is that the "one version behind the newest and best" phenomenon is starting to infect brand new phones as well. The 5T and Razer Phone are just two examples; there's also Xiaomi, which just launched its Mi Mix 2 in Spain with 2016's Android Nougat as the operating system.
How is that news? (Score:2)
I'd say most Android phones sold in Canada are at least one major Android version behind the latest.
Does it matter (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not as though you're stuck with that option as is the case with iPhones. There are still Android variants that cater to the people who want the latest version and longer support for upgrades. That those devices tend not to sell as well suggests that most consumers don't care or have much higher priorities when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
Re:Does it matter (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Even if it is news, does it really matter?"
One of the things that helps is that Google has made their services and clients and apps upgradable. They moved a lot of things out of the base "OS" and into modular packages. So even if you are not on a recent Android, you might still have the most recent Play Services, Maps, Gmail, Gboard, YouTube, Search, Contacts, Phone app, Earth, Chrome, Connectivity Services, Keep, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Fit, Wear, Photos, Calendar, Auto, Pay, GNews, Talkback, Sound Search, messenger, etc, etc, etc, etc. This helps a lot with consistency and security. Of course, this doesn't solve all the problems, but it does help.
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It's not as though you're stuck with that option as is the case with iPhones.
You are soooo right Apple sent a bunch of thiugs to my place last night and beat the shit out of mem because I hand't run updates for a week.
Your howaboutism is strong. Believe it or not, this is a story about Android, not Apple, and you just justified buying a new phone with an outdated Android OS on it. Bravo!
Re:Does it matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumers seem to be perfectly fine with an older version of the OS or they don't actually care at all.
Mobile phone OSes are approaching computer OS levels of interest. They are mature, feature rich, and quite frankly upgrades lack killer features which make them enticing. In the early days of mobile OSes we used to get excited for these due to lacking features and functionality in the existing OS. But really I have yet to see a feature that makes me want Oreo enough to care about not having it. Same goes for Nougat, I'm actually a few versions behind and just don't give a shit.
The important part is security, and security has been decoupled from OS versions since Android 4.4 meaning you can still be running a Kitkat system and be fully up to date with all security patches.
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Mobile phone OSes [...] are mature, feature rich, and quite frankly upgrades lack killer features which make them enticing.
Major mobile operating systems only recently got the ability to show multiple applications side-by-side on one tablet screen.
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Why would I want to see two apps at once on my phone? That works fine on the desktop, not so good on the small form factor.
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Major mobile operating systems only recently got the ability to show multiple applications side-by-side on one tablet screen.
Why would I want to see two apps at once on my phone?
It isn't about your phone as much as it is about your tablet, which runs the same operating system as your phone and has a screen with two to four times as much surface area.
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Major mobile operating systems only recently got the ability to show multiple applications side-by-side on one tablet screen.
Not quite. Firstly multitasking on a small phone is a pointless, and tablet devices have had this functionality for a long time. It just wasn't part of default Android.
Anyway that feature was introduced in Nougat, so why would you worry about not having Oreo again?
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Anyway that feature was introduced in Nougat, so why would you worry about not having Oreo again?
Because tablets are still being sold with Marshmallow or earlier. Someone who receives one as a birthday or Christmas gift has no opportunity to specify a particular model.
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Because tablets are still being sold with Marshmallow or earlier. Someone who receives one as a birthday or Christmas gift has no opportunity to specify a particular model.
So someone missing a feature that wasn't advertised would bitch about it when getting it as a present? Again, my Galaxy S Tab had split screen back in the Kit Kat days. If it were a killer feature to you, then buy accordingly, or be one of those people who complain about a present, at least you won't get another one that way. In general it just isn't a requirement, especially with fast application switching having been a thing since the early days of tablets.
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In general it just isn't a requirement, especially with fast application switching having been a thing since the early days of tablets.
How does one efficiently take notes on a document he's reading if he cannot see both the document and the area in which to enter notes?
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Err, start with not on a tablet, or then go with what I originally said: Buy the one with the killer feature advertised, like most tablets premium which don't run Oreo, or Nougat.
You're complaining about a very very specific problem experienced by a very small subset of power users and even smaller subset of which may have been silly enough to buy the wrong device or unlucky enough to be gifted one.
If someone gives me a Ford Mustang, my first reaction is not that I can't take it to the beach. Manufacturers
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I'm actually a few versions behind and just don't give a shit.
The important part is security, and security has been decoupled from OS versions since Android 4.4 meaning you can still be running a Kitkat system and be fully up to date with all security patches.
Not giving a shit is fine, but android security is not really patched. Only (play store/ google) apps are.
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I am just so sick of code thrash, they've tried every paradigm three times why aren't they ever ready to choose?!
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I remember when I was called a customer, not a consumer.
At 28 I guess I'm just old.
No, you remember when you didn't pay attention. We've been called consumers since well before my time, and I'm knocking on 50.
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"Consumer": one who doesn't or can't create (Score:2)
If you think there's some negative connotation attached to consumer, that's on you.
I'm not the only one who sees "consumer" as connoting one who views works of authorship created by others and does not create works. From the GNU project's list of loaded words [gnu.org]:
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If only they would give us a lumpy sheet of glass. Then we could really get stuff done!
Extruding lumps (Score:2)
If only they would give us a lumpy sheet of glass.
There was supposed to be a touch screen that would extrude temporary lumps when the virtual keyboard popped up, so that the user could feel whether his thumbs were correctly lined up over each key. (See video: Tactus Morphing Touchscreen Keyboard hands-on [youtube.com] (2013, 2:54)) But it never ended up coming to market.
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Thanks for explaining your terms. I'll rephrase my opinion based on them:
People are content to purchase devices that support the Consumer role but not the Creator role. In a Discord text chat I'm in, I often see excuses being made: "sorry, can't; on mobile and don't have a PC". I find this unfortunate because it dissuades people from performing the Creator role much if at all.
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I'd say most Android phones sold in Canada are at least one major Android version behind the latest.
It's been that way in the US too.
I think the article is referring to new flagship phones. The kind people pay big bucks for. However, OnePlus has historically been a budget brand.
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Yes, the news is that top of the range phones now ship with outdated Android versions. One of the hallmarks of a top phone used to be a current Android version.
But I do wonder whether this has anything to do with Google selling their own top phone now. They may not give competitors early access to new versions, and I can see why it might take 3 months to do the engineering and testing for an upgrade.
Re: How is that news? (Score:1)
Re: How is that news? (Score:2)
Latest = best? (Score:5, Insightful)
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which one? My Apple SE seems to have rapid-fire upgraded the last few weeks..
Apple Releases iOS 11.1.2 With Fix for Unresponsive iPhone X
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Indeed. Android 8 pretty much ruined my Nexus 5X. This update was the reason I decided to unlock the bootloader for the first time ever to flash the final Nougat ROM.
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So manufacturers that ship an old OS are doing customers a favour by letting others first iron out the bugs in Oreo!
Need legislation... (Score:1)
We need laws that require at a minimum, five years of security updates from the time the phone is initially released. Better yet, require that the OS can be updated directly from the creator of the OS (Google). Also mandate that users must be allowed to remove any unwanted apps, to eliminate bloatware that can introduce its own security risks.
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And also a way to install previous releases of the OS, to prevent something like iOS 11 and many more iOS versions before that.
Law (Score:2)
Why do you need a law to do that? Apple does it already. My iPhone 5 has had updates up until iOS 11, which is roughly five years.
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So... from what you'+re saying I understand that if Apple does it, you don't need a law about it.
Support (Score:2)
If there's a market need for devices that are supported for five years, Apple is filling that need.
Apparently there isn't such a need for Android devices with similar support. If there was, a company would be filling it. So far, it seems, the only company trying to fill this need, Cyanogen, has gone out of business.
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Well there are two main classes of abuses consumer protection laws are supposed to address:
1. When an entire industry decides to make standard terms that are grossly unfavorable to the consumer and largely rely on the consumer's ignorance or indifference until the issue comes up..
2. When bad actors try to sell goods and services that are of much lower quality and more harmful than people reasonably could expect. This is a floating scale from sub-standard to outright scams and frauds.
That Apple delivers many
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A walled garden is never a free market, my friend. The hardware itself may be "free market", but then you're tied into Apple's tightly-controlled market. That's a far cry from doing the "free market thing".
Both updates and something like F-Droid (Score:2)
If you want a phone with updates, do the free market thing and buy an iPhone.
What do I do if I need a phone with both updates and apps distributed as free software? The App Store model will never accommodate a counterpart to F-Droid.
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Get the updates yourself?
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Do we think that the average end-user will know how to (or even *care to*) update their phone? The amount of ransomware and worms running around on unpatched home PCs should clue you in to the answer.
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Do we think that the average end-user will know how to (or even *care to*) update their phone?
Doesn't matter. The same techy friend or relative that handles their computer will handle their phone, just as is the case now if they're lucky enough to ever see an update. The difference is: that friend or relative will actually have updates to install, like with their computer.
Apple devices (Score:3, Informative)
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Say what you want about Apple, but when you don't buy their latest gadgets, you're stuck with older software.
I can't install the latest version of iOS on my iPhone 4. The latest version of macOS runs like crap on my mid-2010 Mac mini.
Stop making generalizations about Apple as if they're better than others. They're not, especially in the last few years.
Re: Apple devices (Score:1)
The iPhone 4 is over 7 years old. I doubt iOS11 would run fast enough on it to be useful, even if you shoe-horned it on to the phone.
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There are tons of standalone iOS Podcast apps, though. Overcast is a good one.
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I have a Mac Mini 2012 model, so we'll see how the latest macOS runs on it - I haven't yet upgraded. I suspect it will be helped by the fact that I have 8GB of RAM and an SSD (I bought this as an inexpensive Mac dev machine), not to mention it's got a quad-code, unlike later Minis.
As far as I've been able to tell when researching the subject for my next smartphone purchase, Apple actually seems to offer updates and security patches longer than most smartphone makers: around five to six years or so, compare
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If it is a Google Nexus device and you want to run stock you can get updates... forever so far!
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If it is a Google Nexus device and you want to run stock you can get updates... forever so far!
Forever? The Nexus 7 (2012) tablet [wikipedia.org] got updates through Android 5 "Lollipop". And then they stopped because Lollipop caused multi-second lag in many cases when apps were blocking on accessing its slow SSD.
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You include a link, but it doesn't say what you claim.
I have the 2012 Nexus 7, and it stopped getting full-OS updates, but it never stopped getting security updates! And Google moved their services to apps, so those are all updated.
The slow SSD was fixed in 5.1 according to your link.
Apparently, depending one what apps were installed before the update, some people were still having performance problems, but that went away if they did factory reset, so it probably was just the apps doing it.
My daily-use tabl
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The slow SSD was fixed in 5.1 according to your link.
My experience owning a Nexus 7 (2012) that had been updated to 5.1 contradicts the link's claim that the slow SSD was fixed in 5.1. The SSD in 5.1 was still far slower than the SSD in 4.4.
Apparently, depending one what apps were installed before the update, some people were still having performance problems, but that went away if they did factory reset, so it probably was just the apps doing it.
How often does a Nexus 7 (2012) need to be factory reset in order to prevent apps from causing this problem?
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Once. After the update.
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Behold, the power of the Hatorade Distortion Field! Where the latest operating system not running on a 7 year old device is totally the same thing as brand new devices not running the current operating system.
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I'm complaining about Quzak making generalizations about Apple. He wrote about his own experience and wrote it in a way that suggested that everyone always had access to the latest iOS and macOS.
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A decade-old ThinkPad X61 made in the Windows Vista era will run Windows 10 or Debian 9 acceptably. What makes Macs and phones different?
Re: Apple devices (Score:2)
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Of course they do. They update the OS on the shipped devices periodically to the latest.
Out of date Android is a problem (Score:2)
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Performance is not a valid argument against patching security bugs, because security (and correctness in general) are a lot more important than performance.
My point was actually that they can't be bothered to do it properly even when they do it.
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Re: Out of date Android is a problem (Score:2)
I no more have to wait on my carrier for my iPhone to get updates than I would have to wait on the store that I bought my Windows PC from to get Windows updates.
The sorry shape of Android updates is entirely Google's fault.
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The sorry shape of Android updates is entirely Google's fault.
There is this thing called leverage that Apple had/has with the iphone. If Samsung tried to force something on carriers, they'd tell Samsung to fuck off and just by LG or [insert manufacturer here] devices instead.
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Tell that to your carrier then. They are the ones who decided to customize your Android experience
Since when has Comcast, my wired home ISP, customized my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8", an Android tablet with only Wi-Fi?
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Shipping a new phone with an OS that's less than 3 months old is not a problem. How long ago did they have their feature / OS Freeze to get everything built, tested and ready to go?
I don't know about other phones, but my OnePlus 3 is still getting OTA updates. It came out over a year ago and just had an update in October. It shipped with 6.0.1 and is now running 7.1.1. Give them a bit of time for some more QA with their specific hardware and I'm sure you'll have Oreo on it early next year.
Re:Out of date Android is a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
On what basis?
Play Services makes most of the APIs available to older versions of Android. Most OEM customizations of Android include security-only patches. On a sidebar on this topic, while carrier-damaging hacks typically involve tower-side security measures and can be implemented that way, data-siphoning security issues that would actually harm consumers are considered 'core functionality' of the OS.
This "fragmentation" battle cry makes no sense, since monolithic install bases are relatively new and almost exclusive to iOS. Windows hasn't had it, Linux hasn't had it, and OSX only recently started doing it (and only on 'blessed' hardware models).
Despite this, software developers managed to write and support software for nearly three decades before the notion of "everyone running the same OS" was a meaningful notion. To this day, millions of desktops run the near-decade-old Windows 7, which happily keeps their hardware running and their applications starting.
So, I pose the question: why is fragmentation such a terrible thing? How do consumers lose out by not running Android Oreo? How is this such a terrible fate that it requires Google to adopt Apple's iron fist on the mobile market? Because personally, if I had my druthers, I'd be running Jelly Bean, or maybe Kitkat, on my phone.
Really, shouldn't the argument be that phones should be able to run a bit more like PCs, with more standardized OS installs that would allow consumers to choose which version to run, without needing to do all kinds of rooting and warranty-voiding operations in the process? I sincerely do not understand the reason why so many are of the persuasion that the ideal environment for computing devices is a monoculture.
Re:Out of date Windows is a problem (Score:2)
A problem that Microsoft needs to work harder to resolve. I do not believe that Microsoft does not have the knowledge and the clout to resolve this issue.
That's OK (Score:1)
Re:That's OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Making phone calls is not the primary purpose for my cell phone at all. I probably make/receive about a dozen calls a month, but I use my phone heavily every day.
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A "phone call" is a form of voice chat that allows the other party to use (less expensive) legacy technology.
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What the hell is a phone call?
A far-speaker that runs in your jeejah. It requires a numeric password to identify the victim.
Having the latest is not the important thing (Score:1)
No big deal (Score:2)
What version of Android a phone is running is pretty far down on my list of things that are important to me in a phone.
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What version of Android a phone is running is pretty far down on my list of things that are important to me in a phone.
I still see phones on shelves that have 4 on them, and plenty of cheap tablets on Amazon do. Now, imagine grandma wants to buy a present for your kid and sees this great deal, a $50 device... She is too concerned about too many other people on her holiday list to bother pulling out her flagship phone just for the one kid, and just dumps it from the bargain bin to her cart without Googling^W thinking twice.
Funny thing, you can s/grandma/ with most younger people, and the outcome is still the same... your kid
older versions still patched (Score:5, Insightful)
not a problem if older version is getting regular patches, reliability with security is the best, not "the bleeding edge".
That kind of thinking is not "infecting" anything, it's proper.
why did the summary use loaded words like "unfortunate"?
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yes my Moto X pure has patches from Republic Wireless for its Android 7
I note some major manufacturers have downgraded some phones back to 7 from 8, maybe some common sense and good practice is starting to prevail
Why do you need to be on the newest release? (Score:2)
I think people are mistakenly equating being on the latest release with being "up to date".
As long as the version you are on is still getting security updates you are on the latest version of your release line. This is all we need, and what we need to push vendors to support. If your hardware is good enough to support the latest release, you should be pushing your vendor for an update, but it's not wholly necessary.
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Control shouldn't be by OEMs (Score:1)
The Windows Phones weren't being updated by the OEMs but by Microsoft and it showed. I feel that if Windows Phones had managed to get a decent market share that Google would have been forced to notice and impose something more under their control from OEMs instead of the mess we have now.
I'm not going to say this made Windows Phone great or anything. I didn't hate it, even preferred Bing maps GPS vs Google Maps but ended up going back to Android because of many apps that I couldn't find or weren't actively
No longer? (Score:3)
New phones were never "Guaranteed To Have the Latest Version of Android." In fact, it is actually rather common for new phones to ship with an older version of Android and understandably so: the manufacturers need time to get the new drivers from the chipset manufacturers, pack the new version of Android full of their crapware, run it through their QA, fix the bugs that are not considered features etc - and that takes time so a manufacturers own Android version lags at least a few months beyond Google's Android.
It is stupid and should be fixed, but that's how it is and how it basically always was.
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It used to hurt sales for flagship phones not to come with the most recently announced version of Android. Now it seems like people don't care if they have Nougat from 2016 or Oreo from 2017. Or at least manufacturers are hoping that people don't care and will still pay a premium for the latest phone without the latest software.
Oreo may be an outlier (Score:5, Informative)
It won't surprise me if OEMs are a little slower to roll out Oreo than they have previous dessert releases, because Project Treble is an enormous change for them. With Treble, Google is drawing a hard line between the Android system and the underlying hardware. Because OEMs have in the past been accustomed to being able to change things at all levels of the stack -- as long as the compatibility test suite passes and associated non-functional requirements are met -- this change is requiring them to restructure their customizations.
Further, since the hardware API is now well-defined, Google is testing it. That couldn't be done before. It's a good thing for the ecosystem and for future compatibility, but it requires work. For example, I wrote a suite for the hardware API that I own and found that the Google Pixel couldn't pass it, because the implementation (from Qualcomm) on the Pixel didn't actually meet the specification in many small ways. Not ways that actually produced observably-incorrect functionality at the higher layers, but it was wrong. It took Qualcomm a couple of months to fix the problems and deliver a version that could pass the new test suite.
So, Oreo has created a lot of new work for component vendors and OEMs, and it's going to take them time to work through it.
In the long run, of course, this should be great for the ecosystem. It should actually allow a vanilla AOSP build to be be flashed onto any device (assuming locked bootloaders and verified boot don't stop you). And once everyone is accustomed to the new structure, it should actually make it much easier for OEMs to get new versions out faster, not only for updates, but on new devices as well.
In the short term, I'm not surprised to see OEMs choosing to launch with Nougat, where they don't have to meet Oreo's requirements. This isn't because they don't want to, but because they have product launch deadlines to hit. By next year's launches they'll have had time to get squared away and I expect things to start moving faster than in the past.
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So, Oreo has created a lot of new work for component vendors and OEMs, and it's going to take them time to work through it.
This is sad. I'm a very reluctant smartphone user who was on an Android 4.4 once-flagship until its cracked screen died 6 weeks ago. I blocked version 5 offer to update even knowing that 6 would never be offered for it despite the original $550 price tag.
Still, I spent those couple years noticing that the hands of friends acquiring budget and not-so-budget phones still hungered for anything beyond versions 4 and 5 and just assumed 6 and 7 were for techies with lots of cash.
This summer I realized with some j
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your comment make me realize that versions 6 and 7 may become the new Android-4-like plague
That's not what I said, and I don't think that will happen. It's certainly not what the people behind Project Treble intend. OEMs aren't refusing to move to Oreo, its just going to take some effort. And once the transition is made, the updates and upgrades will flow much more smoothly. It'll be easier for even budget phone makers to launch the latest OS, and to upgrade it.
That's the idea, anyway. It'll take three or four years to see if it really pans out.
Yawn - nothing new here (Score:2)
There's nothing new here. This has always been the case. Probably more-so for tablets than phones.
Nobody wants to update the crap-ware they package with the device.
If you are lucky, you get the current version with the device. If you are luckier still, you will get ONE major update.
Fragmentation? (Score:2)
If you mean "different OSes" then say so. I use Android devices with Nougat, Marshmallow and Kitkat all the time and I don't have to change the way I use them. They're all the same. There are minor changes to appearance and the newer ones have some stuff I never use (multiple windows..on a 5 inch screen? great. Power saving - I charge them when I need to, in the evening, so it just means plugging something in every 2 days instead of every day). Which apps can I not use on Kitkat? They all seem to work f
It's not a "notorious problem" (Score:3)
Re: It's not a "notorious problem" (Score:2)
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Lack of integration. (Score:2)
They are different companies, that's the basic problem. Google over here with the OS, phone maker over there with the device.
Release cadences and roadmaps are subject to all kinds of practical constraints and pressures, from labor and labor turnover to revenue/financials to other partnerships to strategic mission and vision.
Even when the two organizations know something of each others timelines, that doesn't mean it's practical to synchronize them without significant work and significant negatives. I don't
And what about the problems with iOS 11 (Score:2)
Sensationalist BS title (Score:2)
It seems like the author or The Verge are desperate for per-holidays ad-clicks. When they say "no longer guaranteed", we are led to think that there used to be a time when buying a new Android phone guaranteed having the latest Android release. However, as recently as last year, I believe Honor 6X was released in the late fall with Marshmallow, even though Nougat was released, when in August-September? At about the same time Lenovo and Huawei started shipping new tablets with Marshmallow.
So anyways, this is
It really makes no difference (Score:2)
How I buy a new phone (Score:2)
I'm not sure how typical this is, but I use mine until it breaks. Then I run to the phone store (Verizon in my case) with no clue what I want and end up buying whatever they're pushing.
It's a bad strategy I know, but I don't spend a lot of time keeping up with the latest phones. I have my own prejudices too. I don't want an iPhone and I don't want Samsung so that makes my choices narrower. I ended up with an LG V20 this time. It's a nice phone. It has a removable battery and one of those old fashio
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Or maybe, just maybe, the manufacturers are trying to make their new phones out of milk for the new operating system.
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I doubt it. If you've ever worked in designing hardware, this would seem very familiar to you. You spec the hardware with the system that will be current when you plan to release the hardware. The hardware gets a few weeks or months behind schedule, and so you miss the alignment with the latest and greatest software. You now can further delay your hardware release while you debug and Q&A your newest software or you can ship as originally specified and then field patch later.
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So both of these phones have an Oreo update available on powerup?